directed by Misal Adnan Yıldız

The year long performance programme at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart ICH/I presents a significant figure from Berlin, Emine Sevgi Özdamar. As an intellectual bridge between the German stage tradition and Turkish literature, she has been working in different ways of performing from acting to writing; and she has artistically challenged the politics of migration and narration through her work. In a long term conversation with Misal Adnan Yıldız, who first interviewed her last year as a public portrait for the Turkish newspaper Taraf, she has been considering how to develop a remake of her public reading from early 1990’s. After the publication of her collection of stories Mutterzunge (1990; Engl: Mother Tongue) she was the first non-German author to be awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for individual chapters from her first novel, Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei, hat zwei Türen, aus der einen kam ich rein, aus der anderen ging ich heraus, published in 1992.

During the selection process, the jury invited all candidates for the competition. Özdamar was filmed during her jury interview and her public reading was broadcasted on German TV in 1991. On the second floor of Künstlerhaus, Özdamar will bring the documentation of the historical material together with a live performance referring to how institutions evaluate the artistic vision and cultural identity.